Midterm Flashcards
1
Q
Name the three branches of psycholinguistics:
A
- Language processing
- Language Acquisition
- Neuro-linguistics
2
Q
Describe language processing:
A
-Understanding through use of speech production and comprehension
3
Q
Describe Language Acquisition:
A
-Adapting a mother tongue via strategies and phases
4
Q
Describe Neuro-Linguistics:
A
- How language is represented in the brain…
- Brain centers and language disorders
5
Q
Define Psycholinguistics:
A
- The study of the storage, production and comprehension of a language
- representations and processes
6
Q
The Broca’s area of the brain deals more with ________ ____________.
A
Speech Production
7
Q
The Weirnicke’s area of the brain deals more with ________ ______________.
A
Speech Comprehension
8
Q
What are the two models of language?
A
Model 1 = Behaviorism
Model 2 = Nativism
9
Q
Describe Behaviorism Model:
A
-It is a collection of reinforced verbal behavior (taught)
10
Q
Describe Nativism Model:
A
-An innate mental grammar
11
Q
Our thoughts can be described as being ________ because we think of a complete idea simultaneously, not _________________________-.
A
- holistic
- one word at a time
12
Q
We live in a world of _______ not ________.
A
- Thoughts
- Language
13
Q
Language units are _______ because we have to decode each sound and groups of words.
A
-Discrete
14
Q
What is usually measured in a behavioral study?
A
-Usually measures reaction time in milliseconds
15
Q
Reactions to individual words in English typically range from _____ to _____ milliseconds.
A
200 to 1000
16
Q
List some examples of info we might need to know about our subjects in an experiment:
A
- age
- gender
- race
- education level
- language
- culture
- background
17
Q
Name the three types of stimuli found in a Priming Paradigm:
A
- primer
- fixation
- target
18
Q
Why is priming used?
A
-Because it activates the lexicon
19
Q
Define Psychometrics:
A
-A branch of psychology that deals with the use and application of mental measurement
20
Q
Name a few important points of the language production event:
A
- It occurs in real time
- Many processes take place at the same time
- They occur simultaneously but we study them individually
21
Q
Name the three stages of production in holistic thought:
A
- conceptualization
- formulation
- articulation
22
Q
Describe conceptualization:
A
- This stage is pre-linguistic
- performed in “metalese”
- this occurs in cycles
- observed in pauses during speech
23
Q
What are the four types of speech pauses?
A
- Articulatory
- Delimitative
- Physiological
- Filled
24
Q
What is an Articulatory pause?
A
-A pause that occurs in the period of time between the articulation of one complex sound combo with another
25
What is a Delimitative pause?
- This is a pause caused by punctuation
| - Used to convey written pauses/sentences
26
What is a Physiological pause?
-This is a pause that is caused by something physical, for instance, taking a breath
27
What is a Filled pause?
-A pause that occurs while thinking
| for example "uh" or "um"
28
What is considered to be the most important type of pause and why?
- This would be Filled pauses because they demonstrate that there is a thinking process behind utterances
- Speakers search for missing words, repair speech, and signal that their turn is not finished
29
What are the two aspects of the formulation process?
1. Main Frame
| 2. Subordination index
30
Describe Main Frame:
- This is language specific
- follows subject, verb, object (SVO)
- or Z X-es Y where Z is the Agent and Y is the Patient
31
Describe Subordination Index:
-The number of subordinate clauses divided by the total number of clauses
32
Describe what happens during articulation:
-During this process, once all the information is gathered, the brain sends electrical signals to the muscles within the articulatory system to generate sound
33
At this point in our evolution, we have an advanced _________ _______ that allows us to produce intricate sounds for speech.
-Articulatory system
34
The human brain is ____________.
Lateralized
35
What is Hemispheric Specialization?
- This is when each side of the brain has specialized tasks or abilities
- In humans, the right side of the brain deals mostly with emotions and creativity while the left side deals with math and speech
36
Hemispheric Specialization allows us to:
Multitask
37
Name the four stages of language comprehension:
1. Phonology
2. Morphology
3. Syntax
4. Compositional Semantics
38
Phonology Stage:
- During the language acquisition process, we memorize phonemic categories and try to map each sound we hear
- we use contextual cues
39
What are the two contextual cues that we use to categorize phonemes?
1. We identify the sounds of our language
| 2. We use visual stimuli to help determine what sound we are hearing
40
Sound perception is _______, not gradual.
categorical
41
Morphology/Word stage:
- chain of sound
- we use segmentation to understand
- we try to map groups of sounds into lexicon
42
When we listen to sounds, they are actually part of a _______ _____, and not individual sounds.
Phonetic chain
43
About how many words does the average person store in their Lexicon?
About 40-60K words
44
We typically find the word that we need within ____ of a second, despite storing so many words.
1/4
45
What are the five main ideas that support how we store our Lexicon?
- The frequency effect
- The recency effect
- Full listing hypothesis
- Affix-stripping hypothesis
- Cohort Model
46
Describe the Frequency Effect:
-Words that are used more frequently are easier to access in the Lexicon
47
Describe the Recency Effect:
-Words that are used more recently are easier to access in the Lexicon
48
Describe the Full Listing Hypothesis:
- A hypothesis that states that we store each word individually (with all of their different derivational affixes attached)
- This would be faster but it would need more space
49
Describe the Affix Stripping Hypothesis:
- Hypothesis stating that morphemes are all stored individually and rebuilt into words each time
- This would take more time but less space
50
Describe the Cohort Model:
- This proposes that we begin trying to identify a word immediately by narrowing down the lexicon based on the initial sounds
- Each of these groups that we formed is known as a cohort
- This process continues until the word is complete/identified
51
Experiments show that it is easier to guess a word _____ rather than a word_______.
- Ending
| - Beginning
52
Define Uniqueness point:
- Until this point, there is no distinction
| - At this point, the word is recognizable
53
Define Homonyms:
-These do not have a uniqueness point
54
Define deviation point:
-only found in non-words, refers to the point of the non-word in which it stops having competing words that look like it
55
Syntax stage:
- Here, the Parser is hyperactive, meaning every time you give it an item it tries to predict what comes next
- The parser does not rely on what it perceives, but on what structures in anticipates
56
Compositional Semantics stage:
- once we categorize sounds and identify words within the structure, the parser examines global meaning
- if the sentence is not plausible, the brain will reanalyze it to make is plausible
- surge of electricity (p600)
- if sentence is plausible, you have holistic thought
57
Define Voice Onset Time (VOT):
- The time it takes for your vocal folds to start vibrating after you pronounce a plosive
- the space of time between a release and voicing
58
If voicing starts 30ms after the VOT, it is perceived as ______ and if voicing starts before this time, it is perceived as _______.
- voiceless
| - voiced
59
It has been discovered that we, as humans, are biased to hearing _________ so that we recognize words and speech sounds.
phonemes
60
Describe Word Superiority:
- words are recognized easier than non words
- It takes 400ms to recognize a word and 600-900ms to recognize a non word
- happens because we have to scan through our entire lexicon
61
Words are stored via 2 processes:
1. Affix stripping
| 2. full listing
62
Define cognates:
-Words that are similar in many languages
63
Define false cognates:
-Words from many languages that look similar but have completely different meanings
64
We perceive sounds _____________.
categorically
65
What is Bottom-Up processing?
-Processing based on information flow from lower levels to higher levels
-ex: from sensory input to lexicon
(speech signal to words)
66
What is Top-Down processing?
- Processing guided by information flow from higher levels to lower levels
- Ex: sentence interpretation to words
67
What is Interactive processing?
-Processing that involves a combination of both bottom-up and top-down processing as well as making links within the same level
68
The birth of Psycholinguistics is linked to:
A seminar at Cornell University in 1951
69
Psycholinguistics tends to blend _________ and ________ insights of linguistics to ___________ methodology of psychology.
- theoretical and descriptive
| - experimental
70
Describe dichotic switch monitoring:
-when participants have to identify when speech sounds switch from one headphone to another
71
Techniques that measure ________ ______ provide better temporal resolution but poor spatial resolution.
Electrical activity
72
What is an fMRI?
- Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
- measures changes in neural activity in different brain areas via the difference in magnetic properties of oxygenated/deoxygenated blood
- essentially, measures changes in blood flow
73
What are PET scans?
- Positron Emission Tomography
| - measures radioactive emissions in the blood stream
74
What are CAT scans?
- Computed Axial Tomography
| - a series of x rays at different angles
75
Define Prosody:
-The melody and rhythm of speech
76
Define Intonation:
-The melody or tonal modulation of speech
77
Pauses are more frequent and longer in ___________ _______ than in ________.
- spontaneous speech
| - reading
78
Define Lemmas:
-content based/semantic aspects of words
79
Define Lexemes:
-the spoken shape or written forms of words
80
Define double object constructions:
- Sentences with two objects (usually one direct and one indirect)
- indirect object also referred to as the prepositional phase
81
Define Main Clause:
-The part of a sentence that conveys the main idea
82
Define Subordinate Clause:
-A clause that is either dependent on the main clause or expresses additional/optional ideas
83
Describe Right Ear Advantage (REA):
- Since the left side of the brain deals mostly with speech/language processing, and it controls the right side of the body, usually the right ear is better at picking up speech
- Demonstrated via dichotic listening
84
Define Diphone:
-A sequence of two sounds
85
Describe the McGurk Effect:
-When auditory information presents a certain sound that conflicts with visual stimuli and a new sound is perceived
86
Define Co-articulation:
-When the articulation of one sound is influenced by the place/manner of an articulation of a neighboring sound
87
What is the cocktail part effect?
- How we are able to hone in on specific speech
| - ex: in a crowded room we can focus on a convo and fade other sounds out
88
Deep vs Shallow Orthography:
- Deep orthography is when words/letters of language are not spelled or represented by symbols that match how that word is pronounced
- Shallow orthography is when spelling does convey how something is pronounced (found more in romantic languages)
89
Infants have been found to be able to discriminate categories as early as:
3 months
| high amplitude sucking
90
Describe the Gangong Effect:
- How linguistic context can effect the boundaries between phonetic categories
- ex: co-articulation
91
The minimal unit of meaning is a:
-morpheme
92
Pre-lexical analysis and then _______ ______.
contact phase
93
True or False: In English we have left to right processing
true
94
Inflectional vs derivational
- Inflectional marks grammatical info
| - Derivational adds affixes to make a different kind of word
95
Morphological decomposition:
- when you take apart a word to get to its meaning
| ex: roots, affixes, etc.
96
Zipf's Law:
-high frequency words tend to be shorter than low frequency words
